Lies

Having the urge to do something purely imaginary for a change, I painted this a few days back for a competition run by film magazine Little White Lies to celebrate the release of the new Where the Wild Things Are film. The brief was to fill the mag's front cover template with your own wild thing. With these flying snail creatures I aimed for a balance between creepy and humorous that is similar to the vibe given by the creatures in the film and Sendak's original book. Not liking the idea of a big round stamp on top of the pic, I made this part of the scene: it becomes the illuminating moon.

Unfortunately the painting scanned appallingly, losing a lot of the smoothness and subtlety of the surface. Should've photographed it really. Looking back at it, it's also far too bright. But it was fun and only took a day from idea to completion so not a waste of time I feel.